Centre for the Study of Expertise (CSE)

The Centre for the Study of Expertise, which is hosted by the School of Social Sciences, explores those factors that impact on expertise and its acquisition across many domains of activity. Our members endeavour to enhance understanding of what makes someone an expert and how acquisition of the skills that underpin expertise may be optimised through effective practice coupled with instructional interventions.

Mission

To enhance inter-disciplinary understanding of how people become experts across domains in order to facilitate more effective acquisition of expertise, thereby promoting cultural and social innovation and development.

Inter-disciplinary, Multi-Level and Translational Focus

Experts play a key role in our society - what would society be like without expert scientists, engineers, physicians, or artists? In recent years, substantial progress has been made in understanding the biological, psychological, and cultural bases of expertise. Yet, while expertise is a common research topic, it is typically studied by each discipline in isolation. Scientists engaged in the Centre’s activities are focused on studying experts from a range of disciplinary perspectives including business, law, philosophy, engineering, computing science, neuroscience, psychology and sociology. Moreover, the research group explore expertise at many levels ranging from neural and psychological (What are the mechanisms and processes underpinning expert performance?) to social and cultural (How are experts defined and selected by society?) levels. Our focus is to enhance understanding of expertise in order to improve quality of life across society. In particular, it is envisaged that an enhanced scientific understanding of expertise and its acquisition will impact education and enable our society to better train experts (including scientists), who in turn will be in better placed to train and educate future generations of students and apprentices.

Aims

• To enhance understanding of the factors underpinning expertise and how these are acquired over time using inter-disciplinary approaches.
• To use multi-level scientific approaches that improve understanding of the neural, behavioural, social and cultural factors and interactions that impact on expertise and its acquisition.
• To develop methods to enhance training in education that promote the acquisition of expertise and lead to societal benefits and enhanced development across many fields of professional development.